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A number of useful routes closed in the 1960s could be reopened at relatively low cost and short timescales.
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IT may be almost 60 years since the infamous ‘Reshaping of British Railways’ report was published by Dr Beeching in 1963, but modern politicians continue to use it as a reference point about how not to run a railway.
The economic impact of closing railway lines takes time to realise, and it is only since Privatisation of the network in the 1990s that we can see the transformational effect of investment that was not made available to British Rail by the Government.
As a result of determined policies to promote the use of rail services, journeys have more than doubled over the last two decades to 1.8 billion annually. With the rise has come an expectation that passengers will use new railway routes if available, and that in turn has brought widespread demand to reopen closed lines.
There is an increasing acceptance by policy makers that new railways are a better option than creating more road capacity to relieve congestion, which cannot satisfy the need to reduce harmful emissions.
Since the general election in December 2019, the UK Government has announced that a budget of
£500 million will be made available to recommission closed lines, with further funding of up to £1 billion for projects in northern England.
The typical cost of restoring a closed railway line is between £15 and £20 million per mile, and can be cheaper if the project involves upgrading an existing freight route to passenger standards. The task is much greater for long-closed routes however, which reflects the need to repurchase land, restore earthworks, and rebuild infrastructures before track and signalling can be installed.
The fund the Government has made available will not pay for restoring infrastructure, but will provide money to develop an outline strategic business case for the route concerned, which is the starting point of the process. The OSBC will indicate the likely benefit/ cost ratio (BCR) of the proposal, and if positive enable access to both public and private sector investment.
FAVOURABLE REPORTS
Proposals for reopening lines have been made in the past by the Association of Train Operating Companies, and a document it published in 2009 found there were 75 towns in England with a population of at least 15,000 that had no access to rail services. It was considered that extending the network to reach up to 20 of these population centres would have a positive business case (based on a BCR that exceeded 1.0) for either station or route reopenings.
More recently in 2019, the Campaign for Better Transport published a comprehensive review of the opportunities to restore closed lines and their likely timescales. In all, 33 potential projects were identified that might be reopened by 2035, which would result in the restoration of 156 miles of track,
177 miles upgraded from freight to passenger standards, and 72 new or reopened stations. There were also 13 projects regarded as deliverable by 2025 at a total cost of between £1.28 and £1.82 billion.
Where reopenings have taken place, this has in most cases been the result of action by devolved governments and local authorities, such as the Borders Railway in
Scotland, Ebbw Valley line in Wales, and London Overground.
LOCAL AND STRATEGIC
The Government believes the case should be made by representatives of the communities that will benefit. This is appropriate for short lines such as the Leven branch in Scotland, where Transport Scotland is supporting reopening, and the line between
March and Wisbech that has strong support for restoration from local transport authorities.
This may not be a successful approach in the case of routes that offer a network benefit that reaches beyond the need for local connectivity, and a number of these strategic projects are included in the proposed CBT programme.
The list includes a 25-mile reopening between Okehampton and Plymouth via Tavistock at an estimated cost of £400 million, which is a modest investment to mitigate the risk of bad weather closing the coastal route to the West Country via the Dawlish seawall.
Another opportunity is the Stratford-upon-Avon to Honeybourne gap, which is an eight-mile line but two miles still exist for freight use between Honeybourne and Long Marston, leaving a further six miles to re-engineer at a cost of up to £109 million. Routes such as this can have a significant network benefit in providing
“A 2009 ATOC report found 75 towns in England with a population over 15,000 that had no access to rail services”
service resilience, with the option of using a diversionary route that can mitigate the effect of other line closures for engineering work.
As well as providing journey opportunities for access to jobs,
education and other services, line reopenings will support the development of plans for carbon-neutral transport operations by 2040, which can only result in an increased scope for station and route reopenings.
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